


Wolf Moon

by sister_coyote



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Drama, Gen, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-06
Updated: 2007-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House Solidor has a secret history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Moon

Stones and brambles cut his feet as he ran, and the cold light of the moon felt like a touch on his skin. Dark shapes flowed between the tree trunks, half-glimpsed, but Larsa couldn't make the flashes of dark hair, of bright eyes, of teeth ivory in the thin light resolve into solid shapes.

He knew, as he fled through the pines, his nightshirt catching on low branches—he knew where they were driving him, even before he rounded the copse and stood before the broken spire and the grooved altar. He stopped, his feet sore and tracking blood on the cracked flagstones, and turned. The wolves emerged from the woods in a semi-circle, black and gray and brown and tawny, luminous eyes, shining teeth. Fear crawled up Larsa's back, leaving prickling tracks along his spine, and his heart slammed against his ribs, but he did not run.

The black wolf was the last to appear, coming up the path on silent paws, following Larsa's own tracks. He was lean, glossy-furred, dark as onyx. Larsa's legs shook, and his throat thickened, but he sank to his knees. He did not run. he said, "Honored brother."

The wolf did not stop until they were face to face. Larsa felt his hot animal breath. He swallowed to keep his voice steady. "Before the altar," he said, "for this is a sacred thing. But never on the altar, for I am not a sacrifice." The wolf's eyes were calm as leaves. "I am a Solidor."

The wolf his brother leaned forward so that his muzzle brushed against Larsa's cheek. Larsa caught his breath and did not move. Then Vayne tore out his throat.

The first thing he felt was pain, incredible pain, but nearly as quickly he felt the touch of moonlight slithering over his skin and sinking into his blood, and with that, the pain broke up into shards like mirrorglass, reflecting the world in vivid incomprehensible flashes.

Someone pinned him down as his body arched and thrashed in the throes of the first change, and sometimes that someone was Gabranth, his arms heavy across Larsa's shoulders and his expression serious and concerned, and sometimes it was a wolf, huge and tawny-furred, leaning its bulk against Larsa's lighter body. Sometimes Larsa's hands scrabbled at the dirt and stone, and sometimes he had no hands to scrabble but his legs kicked at alien angles, and sometimes the sound he made was a scream and sometimes it was something else.

Sometimes there was a woman and sometimes there was a wolf, but her eyes were always the same, watching him with calm interest.

When the change was over, he lost his mind for a time and ran wild, through the woods, with the pack at his heels. There was nothing else in the world but the smell of the dark earth, the wind in his fur, the taste of blood between his teeth, and the light of the moon overhead. His body throbbed with a pulse like drums.

He came to himself in his own bed, with his feet damp and pine-needles clinging to his skin and his hair smelling of the night air. He could remember, dimly, being carried there; but he could not recall who had done it, whether it was his brother or his guardian.

* * *

It was the secret of the Solidors, from time before time, before the Empire was even a Republic, when Solidor was the name of a tribe rather than a noble house. Though they pretended obeisance at the temple, to the gods of the city and the people, in secret they still paid their homage to A-Soli-Nahl the Hunter, who was neither male nor female or who perhaps was both—the god of the chase, and the change, who it was said had given the gift of wolfwalking to the first Solidor, to be passed by blood and fang down the family line. On the new moon after the first change, he took part for the first time in the rituals, for he had proved himself strong enough in body and mind to bear the transformation, and so proved himself worthy of true initiation. (Had he been too weak, he would have died there before the altar, bled out under the eyes of his brother and the Judges.)

He cut his hand with a silver knife, and bled into the flame, and spoke words he did not understand, as the Judges and his father and brother stood around him, made monstrous and divine by the flickering light of the sacred fire.

When it was over, Vayne took his hands briefly and said, "Brother." Larsa smiled, despite himself.

* * *

As a hume, Larsa was cautious, thoughtful, circumspect. Drace was his favorite teacher, and she accepted nothing less of him.

As a wolf, Larsa was less so in ways that surprised even him. When Vayne and Ghis went to hunt the boar, running sleek and swift, Larsa felt the wolf's heart leap in him and moved to follow them, to not be left behind. But Gabranth put himself in his path and lowered his head, blocking the way; guarding Larsa, even from himself, even now.

Larsa was half his size; were it to come to open battle, Gabranth could force him down, easily. But that was rarely the way of wolves: they bristled, they locked eyes, they showed teeth and snarled, and so did Larsa. His lips curled back, and his eyes met Gabranth's, Gabranth's wolf-eyes bright in the moonlight, more than half again his size so Larsa had to look up, and yet look up he did. Steady and resolute. Though he did not look around, he could feel Vayne's gaze on him, Vayne's harvest-moon eyes bright against the unrelieved black of his fur.

Gabranth looked away, breaking the gaze and admitting defeat with it. Larsa felt the tension go out of him as the battle ended; but then Gabranth's body twisted, and he eased himself down, shoulder and hip, rolled over to show the paler fur of his belly. Larsa did not know what to do, but the wolf-body did, and so he stepped forward to stand over Gabranth's exposed belly and chest, asserting his dominance though his yearling-body was too small, his coltish legs and narrow chest straining to span Gabranth's much larger body.

For a moment he stayed like that, looking down, as Gabranth did not look back, submitting, and then the moment passed and he half-jumped away. Gabranth rolled to his feet.

Larsa thought, _But nonetheless you were right_. He would tell Gabranth that, later, when they were humes again. For now, he looked at Gabranth and looked away; Larsa-the-wolf knew the ways of power, even if Larsa-the-boy was still learning.

* * *

He did not at first understand, that they could be so calculating and restrained by day, so unrestrained by night. He ran and felt nothing but his body, the pulse of his blood, the flex of his muscles; he hunted and his vision constricted to the prey, and his fangs tore and his claws dug the ground. He howled, the song rising out of him unplanned, unknown.

He celebrated the silent wild rituals of their god-goddess the hunter, the changer, the unknowable one.

In time, slowly, he came to see that their wildness by night allowed them their control by day, that power had two sides and faces, and they could be masters of both. In time he saw the balance that they walked, and kept.

It took him longer to see the ways in which they were not in balance.

* * *

"You are the only she-wolf in the pack," Larsa said to Drace, carefully, as they played chess in his audience-room. His fingers lingered over the jade pieces before he selected the knight.

Drace smiled a little. "I am the only bitch," she said, soft and dry, "yes."

"That is unusual for a wolf pack, is it not?" He watched her move, the kaleidescope of possible intentions playing out in his mind, condensing slowly to the most likely theory, as she had taught him.

"Very," she said. "Your father's first wife was one of us, and a great woman she was, as hume and wolf. But there have been none but myself since. It is . . . not a good thing, I think, for the pack to be so unbalanced. In the early years of the House there were many women among the wolves, for the Lords of Solidor chose strong wives to survive the bite and run with them. But the Empire means political marriage, diplomacy, courtiers—there have not been many since strong enough to bear it, fewer still we would trust with the secret. Or so I am told."

The Emperor rarely ran with the pack of late, in his age—though he was in name the pack leader, yet in fact that place had fallen to Vayne. "And my mother?" he asked.

"I gave her the mark myself, for she seemed more at ease with that idea." Drace shook her head. "But it is harder, for those not of Solidor's line; harder too for those who are older. It did not kill her outright, but she fell into madness and eventually death."

"You are not a Solidor," Larsa said. He toyed with a captured marble rook. "And you were not a child when you were bitten."

"Harder," Drace said, "but not impossible."

"And you," he said, "and Gabranth," but she shook her head quickly, and he lapsed into silence, and then said, "And the Emperor my father does not run with the pack."

Drace looked at him sideways, and he thought of his brothers, his elder brothers, dead before he could know them.

He was silent a moment, and then said, "The House is out of balance. The pack is out of balance."

Drace said nothing.

"I will set it right," he said, "though I must leave the city to do it, and the pack."

"Will you?"

"I will. I swear it." He looked up at her, and she was smiling a little, faintly.

"Go then," she said. "And have a care. We do not have many sons of Solidor left."

He inclined his head to her, the last she-wolf of the pack.

* * *

He slipped from the palace silently, and assumed the shape of the wolf in the dark of night the better to make his way quietly out of the city. He caught sight not scent of anyone else.

But then, suddenly, on the road was Gabranth: huge and tawny in the moonlight, standing in his way. Larsa lifted his muzzle to meet Gabranth's eyes in the stare-of-challenge, but found that Gabranth was already looking down, challenge deferred. Gabranth lowered his head and licked the underside of Larsa's muzzle, a clear affirmation of submission, and then went on silent paws back up the road, toward the city.

Larsa set out into the night, toward Bhujerba.


End file.
